Translation software

[griz326]

I'll be traveling through China this summer and I am actually bringing a small Vista computer.

I have Wenlin and Pleco on my Palm...

...but I am wondering:

Is a Chinese translation program that translates sentences and paragraphs from English->Chinese and Chinese->English?

Will it utilize handwriting recognition for Chinese characters like Wenlin?

Google's translation engine does this but I thought it would be helpful to have that sort of program on my local computer in case I cannot reach google.

Any suggestions???

[trevelyan]

For English-Chinese translation try searching on Google for a program called Neon. For Chinese-English you can try Adso if you're comfortable compiling software from source and have access to a C++ compiler under Windows.

[griz326]

I am afraid I could not find Neon for anything other than Arabic on Google...and I do not have access to a C++ compiler.

Are there any other options?

[griz326]

I downloaded a trial copy of transwhiz and am looking it over.

The program does much more than I need it to do. It can even be run using translation memory.

Doctor Eyes is another recommended program, but it is not yet Vista compatible.

[griz326]

Well I am back from China and had a wonderful time.

The Transwhiz and Wenlin translation software on my UMPC computer were of limited usefulness. I wound up buying a sentence translator which I left in China with friends.

Now that I am back, my needs are different.

What I really want is a Skype chat plug-in. Here is what it would do:

Type in the English sentence and the plug-in tool automatically translates the sentence into Chinese characters for my IM partner in China...and into pinyin characters so that I can attempt to speak the sentence.

Does such a tool exist???